


orphée

by papersong



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Canon Rewrite, Everybody Dies, Everybody Lives, F/M, Gen, Haurchefant Greystone Lives, M/M, Metafiction, Other, Reincarnation, Screw Destiny, Spoilers, haurchefant loves you, meta variant on the haurche revival fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27810172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papersong/pseuds/papersong
Summary: "I liked you best in Japanese," you tell Haurchefant from your chair by his hearth......The warrior of light breaks canon, convention, and the 4th wall to revive Haurchefant.Haurchefant x Warrior of Light, as in the player, you, and every warrior of light, ever.(He is always, invariably, irrevocably in love with you.)
Relationships: Haurchefant Greystone/Player Character, Haurchefant Greystone/Reader, Haurchefant Greystone/Warrior of Light, Haurchefant Greystone/You
Comments: 26
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

"I liked you best in Japanese," you tell Haurchefant from your chair by his hearth.

"Japanese?" Haurchefant asks, looking up from his reports. You'd appreciate the soft, rolling French-ish sound of his voice--he makes the question sound less like "Japanese," more like "Japonaise"--but you were barely awake enough to understand, much less notice the Ishgardian accent. 

"A language ... from home." You breathe, the pauses between words stretching long until you're snoring lightly in Arthurioux's old armchair.

Haurchefant thinks himself fortunate--many have seen you as the Warrior of Light, god-killer and dragonslayer. But to him, you also come bone-weary and sleep-worn, the stoic mask slipping an ilm to reveal a soul ancient beyond your years, as if you have several lifetimes of joys, sorrows, and futures in memory. In one of these lives, his father's memoirs traveled as far as your homeland, perhaps. Count Edmont would be delighted.

The fireplace crackles, a friendly sound. He trudges his way through a budget review and an incomprehensible appeal--is that script even Ishgardian? Before the quiet question pipes up in his mind, asks politely--In your stories, what happens to him? Haurchefant sets the voice aside until the embers dim and the office begins to grow cold. 

When he carries you to the guest room that he should know better than to think of as yours, you turn your nose into his chainmail despite the icy metal. It feels like a fist closing around his heart, squeezing--In the daylight, it's easy to sing praises of your chiseled figure, your shining sweat, your splendid muscles. But at night it's harder to be so blasé.

Haurchefant doesn't have your prescience. He doesn't need it for he has the bells in your voice, the twinkle in your eyes when you speak to him about foreign worlds. The Warrior of Light has a future beyond Ishgard. You cannot stay, and he would not ask it of you. So he instead tells himself--he has made his peace with being a footnote in your story. The acceptance tastes bittersweet, like hot cocoa missing sugar, and no one has to know that in the darkness, he holds you a little longer, a little tighter than he needs to.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time, you didn't know. You skipped cutscenes for gameplay and multitasked during the grind. Then: the Vault. Haurchefant's death scenes played like shots from a romantic tragedy. Though the animation was choppy and the expansion dated from 2015, your player character's face showed more expression than you'd thought the model could handle as you held his hand between both of yours. Your iron heart moved a little, because that was when you knew he loved you.

The second playthrough, you tried to love him back, thinking you might save him by making the right choices. You tried every option, and then the walkthroughs, which say--nope, cutscene death is permanent, unless you're Nanamo. 

The third time, you avoided Haurchefant. If he had to die, you'd rather not get attached. Not again, not anymore than you already were. But still, he sheltered you from hostile nations. He still brought you home to meet his father. He saved you still, with neither question nor hesitation, throwing down his life as if he is always, invariably, irrevocably in love with you. 

Since his writers wanted to preserve ambiguity, he will never be able to say it, and you hate how his story was written. His actions speak loud enough, but the most vicious hurt is not how his stepmother scorned him or how the Ishgardian nobility dismissed him. It's how his own creators failed to care enough--if not to let him love you, then to at least let him live. In a series that defies death like clockwork, his had to be real. The writers remind you of it time and again in memories and flashbacks, rubbing salt in the wound so it stays fresh.

You rage quit for several months because Haurchefant deserved better. Then, you restart again, and again, and again, unsure why you linger despite knowing how the story ends.


	3. Chapter 3

He always tended the chocobos in the mornings, just after the pale disc of the dawn sun peeked over the horizon.

The second life, you were a man, all his dreams of glistening muscles made flesh, and taller even than he had been. None of the chocobos supported your weight despite their Ishgardian breeding. Still, you remember sitting in the stables, his back to your chest, picking golden straw out of his silver hair. You had helped him dust the birds during mornings. His hair had been the color of rainstorms the day he recalled how the Countess had sent him to raise chocobos.

The thirty-third life, you were Lalafell. You had been standing on Haurchefant's old desk, patting Emmanellain's head as the youngest brother came down from a panic attack over his newfound responsibilities. Emmanellain had blabbered how chocobo rearing was menial labor for low-born squires, not Dragonhead knights, much less its commander. Yet Haurchefant proved a credit to House Fortemps, nevertheless--how was he to fill those shoes, when he could barely stay astride a military mount, much less raise one and run its fortress...

If Emmanellain hadn't said so, you would have never guessed. In all your lives, Haurchefant has never complained about the back-breaking exercise of shoveling the stalls, the copious sneezing from the chocobo dust baths, the bone-piercing cold from standing still as they roused in winter. So dearly he had loved those birds.

His hair is blue today. You forget how many lives it has been, but he smiles at you with unchanging fondness, whether you are reptilian like the dragons of their millennium war, or fluffy like the old cat at Aymeric's manor, or plain and elezen, or a potato.

"Good morning, my friend!" His words fog the air. "Your body is as beautiful as ever. How the dawn glistens--"

You nod sleepily, used to the bombastic monologuing. By your fifth life, you'd become familiar with Haurchefant's eccentricities. By your fifteenth, Camp Dragonhead knights had been surprised instead by the new adventurer's nonchalance at their lord's, uh, _enthusiasm_.

As you wait for Haurchefant to finish speaking, you watch the wind carry away the wisps of his breath. Today was cold. You hadn't realized, cocooned in carefully tucked-in blankets until you'd gotten up. Then, your bare feet hitting the freezing stone floor.

"Did you carry me to bed?" You ask before your brain catches up to your mouth. Because you could swear--How else did you fall asleep by the fireplace, and wake up warm? Who else, but him?

"I might also take you to bed--" Haurchefant segues with this absurd eyebrow wiggle. How'd they even animate that gesture? Which makes you wonder--

It may not be in his programming to say he loves you, but in the programming, there's the outrageous flirting. The bird he hand-raised for half-a-decade from a hatchling chick. How he runs to your aid in battle, protects you and heals you, even before the inevitable end. You wonder if someone programmed the tiny details--how his hand brushes yours when he passes you the cleaning glove. How his touch lingers when he helps you on the taller bird. How his gaze seems to soften when he watches you trot away.

As the morning sun blazes over the snow, the Vault quest drawing one day nearer, you also wonder when the programming ceased to matter, because your affections had become true.


	4. Chapter 4

In one of your worlds, a man wrote that there are three deaths: when the body ceases to function, when they are buried, and when their name is spoken for the last time. There is life in stories. So, you venture into the lifestream--of the gameplay, the Youtube walkthroughs, the Lodestone entries. You dive deep into wiki pages, forum discussions, fandom posts, until you think you might drown before you emerge from the depths of lore holding the fragments of his soul.

Some of Haurchefant's aether shines brightly, those aspects of his character nearly impossible to miss, like his infallible kindness and his odd character. Whenever Emmanellain refers off-handedly to "the Falling Snows," you remember his insistence on naming the intercessory. Whenever you drink chocolate, you wonder where a paladin lord learned the Master Culinarian III recipe. 

Then, there are the lesser-known stories. In English, he's less obvious about wanting to ride you like a pony. You liked him best in Japanese, as you'd said. But you also noticed the stiff tone Haurchefant took with his father in the original dialogue. The canon lore had described his anger as a youth, the unseasoned bastard of seventeen summers who killed two bandits with naught but a dagger. Some people are kind from innocence. He chose to be kind despite knowing a world that was not so, and for that, you admired him.

Not every Warrior of Light is like you. In yet lesser-known stories, Haurchefant's soul is interwoven with other aether, from other adventurers: those who disliked him, who could not understand why others cared for him, who liked him but preferred others, who loved him the most, for years and years. You gather all these fragments of his soul, knowing you are not attempting Raise, Resurrection, or whatever spell they store in a Phoenix Down. This is different magic.

After you emerge from the lifestream, drenched in aether, you lay out the pieces of Haurchefant's soul. It is evening. His soul-fragments flicker and sway like a memory of your breaths in the Ishgardian cold. You splay your fingers over a keyboard, a tablet, or a simple sheet of paper...

There is power in stories. Your world has legends of a sculptor so talented, he gave life to granite; a musician so skilled, he seduced life from death. The creation of beauty preserves us. So you put your hand to pen, to paper, to plastic or wood or stone or metal. And you cast--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> citing sources:  
> "There are three deaths: the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time." is a quote by David Eagleman


	5. Chapter 5

The dusk before the Vault, he finds you on the Dragonhead ramparts. As the sun kisses the horizon, Haurchefant wraps you in a blanket, tucks you under his arm, and asks:

"What troubles you, my friend?"

In your fifth, sixth, ninth, eleventh, and twenty-eighth lives, you told Haurchefant how he died. You told him in the heat of battle. You told him after trying the fitness equipment he had installed--no, really--in his bedroom. You told him in the Falling Snows, plotting to evade destiny over a shared mug of chocolate. You told him, and it changed nothing. 

You have one last, desperate idea. But you will not make promises you cannot keep, just as you will never lie to him.

"I think you're going to die tomorrow." You whisper, "I think you'll die--protecting me." 

The sun dips below the earth. The sky, the world, and his hair go steel-blue like shadows on snow. Haurchefant glances down at you in the new darkness.

"Do I succeed?" He asks, quietly. There's no doubt--Have you gone mad?--or anger--He isn't mad that you failed to save him for he trusts you always, absolutely.

"Yes." You tell him.

"Good" Haurchefant kisses your knuckles like a knight with his lady, except you never got your happy endings. His smile is oddly soft, almost shy in the young night. "I couldn't bear the thought of losing you." He says.

You have heard those words--you forget how many times. Every time you think your heart has scarred over, he dies, and it hurts like a wound freshly opened. This time, he's here to wipes away your tears. But next time he won't be, and the thought makes you cry harder, latching on as if you can pull him back from death.

Haurchefant rocks from foot to foot, soothing you with the motion and a steady stream of imagined futures that he describes to you. Tomorrow, you'll rescue Aymeric. Perhaps you'll battle the Archbishop. Perhaps you'll negotiate with Thordan, the heretics, and the dragons before you march onwards, to new adventures. Perhaps you'll go somewhere warm like Limsa Lominsa, or perhaps somewhere hot like Thanalan. Perhaps there will be other worlds, as you are prone to mentioning in your sleep--

"Tell me you live to a ripe old age." Haurchefant sighs into your hair. "Tell me you have many adventures. Tell me you fall in love." His smile is brilliant and fragile, shot through with cracks letting out the light of his soul, so bright it almost hurts to look. "Tell me you have all the children you might want--" He leans into your touch, as if you are all that hold him together. "Tell me." He pleads.

"...I wanted that with you."

You get a second's warning--his pupils blown wide in the darkness, his heartbeat leaping like that of a bird in your hand. Then, Haurchefant crushes his lips to yours like he wants to devour you, hold you, make you stay--before he remembers himself. His touch softens from a demand to a request to an offering, no longer the casual flirting in the Camp Dragonhead office, or the quiet affection in the chocobo stables. This the supplicant at the temple of Halone, bringing his heart to sacrifice at your altar. Please treat him gently, for few have been kind, though he has never lost his hope, and here you are.

You return his devotion, kiss back, and Haurchefant whimpers with need. You're tugging him back towards your room when the ground falls out beneath your feet. He lifts you in his arms, his expression glowing with enough affection to burn, but he's always careful to keep you sheltered, keep you safe, keep you warm, even if he never gets to keep you. So you will always return to him, time and time again, adventure after adventure, life after life. 

The wood door of your room shuts softly. You cannot recall which life you began to think of this place as home. Haurchefant cannot say he loves you, but here, he shows you--with his heart, his body, his life--that he is yours, yours, yours.


	6. Chapter 6

Maybe you live to a ripe old age, fall in love, and have many children. Maybe you don't. 

Life rarely goes how we want. Most of the time, it doesn't even go like it's supposed to. That's why we have fiction: to challenge convention. To rewrite destiny. To create beauty, to preserve us from death.

Through stories, we meet the still-living and not quite fictional, the people who died long before we were born, and characters who were never alive. Perhaps these characters will never be real. But they still teach us, change us, stay with us, for years and years and years--

Perhaps you find someone like him and fall in love with their caring, their passion, their quirks, or their unshakable sense of right and wrong. Perhaps you live out your lives together. Or perhaps you never get to keep each other, only their delicious hot cocoa recipe with the mozzarella and cinnamon.

Or perhaps you take his story into yourself and grow, inspired to rise above your birth, your circumstances, and others' prejudice. Perhaps you learn to love our world despite its cruelty, and try to make it better though it has never been kind to you.

Or perhaps you forget him, drop the game, or leave it years from now, after the final fantasy ends. Haurchefant loved you knowing you were an adventurer first, that you were bound to wander countries and worlds beyond his reach. There is also a love in letting go.

And then perhaps you never think of the silver-blue haired elezen again, not consciously. Perhaps decades later, after the game is long since over, you are living out the last days of your earthly existence when it happens: The last sunset you will ever witness glares off the hospital window, the precise blue-silver shade of his hair, and you are reminded of a game you played long ago, a city of knights and dragons, a silver fuller. Before you venture into darkness for the last time, you wonder if everyone truly dies alone, because you suspect you will carry your stories to the end, not unlike having lived out your lives together.


	7. Chapter 7

You take your last breath. Then, there is nothing. Until you wake to a fire-warmed room with stone walls, wooden doors, and indents on the ground where shirtless elezen do their squatting during daytime.

And this is--no. Impossible. Absurd. You just died. Yet the broken shield with the red unicorn hangs where you remember his portrait. Haurchefant should be dead, but he's right below the shield, asleep, alive, his chest rising and falling with each breath. He's dozed off atop the piles of paperwork on his desk. You watch the candlelight play over his hair, still unable to decide if it's blue or silver. He looks different than you remember, his habergeon nowhere to be found as he wears a tunic of soft karakul cashmere the color of Ishgardian forests before the everlasting snow.

Some religions believe life has a new game plus. Some call it reincarnation, heaven, paradise, nirvana. You may not believe in it. But in the end no one has seen death and returned to tell the tale, so who could say existence is any more or less than a game, a fantasy, the product of genetic and electronic code, the fever dreams of some mad god?

Standing feels real enough, the carpet plush, the ground solid beneath your feet. You hesitate before you touch him. The raised wrist of your dominant hand still throbs with the ache of forbidden magic. Then, you reach forward--

His hair is softer than you imagined. When you push aside a cup of chocolate to see him better, its contents steam, the mug still hot. You brush aside his bangs--they still hang too far into his eyes. You resolve to get him a hairclip, and then marvel at the realization that you now have a future to plan. 

Haurchefant drools a little in his sleep. You dab at his face with your sleeve. He starts awake, giving you a bleary stare that immediately becomes shock, then disbelief, then joy. You remember how he always wore his feelings on his sleeve. He flashes that familiar, maniac grin. Then, you're in his arms, breathing in the scent of pine and earth and chocolate. His grip is so strong it hurts. You make a noise of protest. 

"Ah. Mine apologies. I was--" He pulls back, looks at you, and loses his words. Haurchefant tries again, taking a deep breath, "You are--"

You brace yourself for Splendid! Beautiful! Tempting! the usual stream of effervescent praise. You don't expect Haurchefant's lower lip to tremble, his gaze tracing your features, as if he still can't quite believe that you're here and he's holding you again. For a moment, the room's silent except for the crackle of the fire and the sound of your breathing. Then, Haurchefant closes his eyes. His hooked nose bumps yours as he rests his forehead against your forehead, grounding himself in your presence.

You draw closer, bracing your hand against his chest, and you feel the hard knot of the scar tissue under the fabric. Your memories rush back--He had died, just as you said. Your spells had knit his wounds. But it wasn't enough. You threw yourself into the lifestream to retrieve his soul, found yourself in a different world of man-eating metal birds and sky-scraping glass houses. Behind lighted screens you found the fragments of his aether, gathered them, wove your magic--and how long has it been? You feel like a lifetime has passed, a lifetime lived without him, in a world where he did not exist, not like this. 

As you describe your adventures, Haurchefant leads you by the hand to his rooms. You tell him everything you could not say when you had been a stoic Warrior of Light. He warms a new pot of chocolate as he listens, touching you all the while--a hand on your arm, an arm around your shoulders, his shoulders pressed to your side like he's reluctant to let you go. As you speak, you notice the dark circles under his eyes, the white strands in his silver-blue hair, how your absence has worn on him. 

"I woke, only to find you missing from me." He whispers after you run out of words. He has moved so close you're practically in his lap, the hot chocolate forgotten on the stove. Where he is normally cheerful without fail, in the dark, his touch become needy, anxious. He gathers you close as if afraid you will vanish. "My dear, how could you risk yourself, risk everything--" He noses into the crook of your neck. You jerk back instinctively at the cold. Hauchefant chases after you, soothing you with his touch, with warm lips to your neck, warm hands along your sides. "You are everything--"

"I love you." 

The words spill from your lips before you think. For a second, an old fear seizes you--He cannot return your affections. It isn't in his programming--But Haurchefant feels you tense and makes a wounded noise. He presses your palm against his chest, the steady rhythm of his heart reassuring you that he is here. He draws you to him slowly, carefully, and he tastes of chocolate, bitter but sweet, so sweet. You can taste the sugar as he replies--

"Oh, my dear. But of course, I do. I love you--" And again, "I love you." He says, casting his own wards as you fall apart in his arms. Those three words, repeated softly, hold you together until the dawn, when the camp wakes and Corentiaux must lead the morning exercises because Haurchefant has gone missing. Afterwards, the Fortemps knight finds his lord asleep in his rooms, wrapped around you still. The word of your return spreads before you wake, until most of Camp Dragonhead and some of Ishgard starts pounding down Haurchefant's door. 

You rub the sleep from your eyes. He springs to his feet, bright-eyed and refreshed, but still holding your hand. He pulls you towards a new beginning. It is morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to do:  
> proof and edits  
> main fic edited to ch 4. ch 4 needs work: too much thought, not enough feeling.
> 
> authors note (on fanfiction)
> 
> this is my first fic, plz comment if you see typos or have suggestions. feedback is much appreciated. 
> 
> also I'll be going through and making revisions for the nxt few wks, feedback will help polish this


	8. Author's Note 1/3: On Death in Fiction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not fanfic, just commentary.
> 
> tldr; I am salty about FFXIV killing Haurchefant, but also generally about how creators, especially game developers, use death in fiction.

My favorite characters always die. Many writers would consider this pattern normal, or even argue that death is a hallmark of good character writing--that is, dead characters become our favorites because their death makes their character more compelling. The emotional impact of a death creates attachment to the character. A sense of pity, sympathy, or injustice at their death drives people to engage with the story. Hence, the Stephen King school of writing advises, "Kill your darlings."

Stories have consequences. As media becomes more diverse, audiences have began to challenge the fact that dead fictional darlings are disproportionately woman, minorities, and LGBT or LGBT-coded people. Even if we set aside this question of why certain demographics are treated as more expendable in fiction, we must address the question of why we must kill anyone in stories. 

From Plato and Aristotle to Shakespeare and Gabriel García Márquez, some part of the human psyche loves tragedy, has loved tragedy, will love tragedy for as long as stories exist. But we also enjoy high-fat, high-sugar foods; we enjoy sitting until it ruins our backs; and we enjoy staring at a screen for hours and days and weeks on end. Just because we like something doesn't mean it's good for us. I am of the belief that we should strive to make a world better, be it through action, fiction, or both; therefore, I have a problem with stories perpetuating violence when there is already enough death in the world.

I have two additional problems with killing characters in the subfield of storytelling that is game-writing. First, killing off video game characters often results in inconsistent treatment. Some characters are killed permanently. Some get plot armor. Some get killed and revived. In a decade-spanning game like FFXIV, the involvement of multiple writers or even multiple teams often means character deaths are treated unevenly. The inconsistent treatment means NPC permadeath can break the suspension of disbelief for fans who follow a story closely enough to notice the discrepancies.

Second, and perhaps more tenuously, games (especially RPG's) as a medium are about agency. Permadeath is counter to player choice. Pre-determined endings and designed helplessness suggest the player's influence on the world is only an illusion allowed to persist because of the game developers' whims. This would be an interesting conundrum of the medium to explore. But the game in question isn't the Stanley Parable, it's Final Fantasy.


	9. Author's Note 2/3: On love of fiction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no story just meta commentary eeeeeee

What's the difference between fiction and reality? Not all literary traditions recognize a clear distinction between fiction and nonfiction. Even in the Western canon, modern works like _The Matrix_ draw their power from blurring the line. If humans cannot experience the world except through our minds, how do we know that reality is other than a simulation? After two decades, the 1999 film continues to be referenced in pop culture and politics because the question persists, and asking it enabled _The Matrix_ to hold relevance beyond its fictional world, making audiences question their reality. And while two decades is no small amount of time, _The Matrix_ is only a more recent presentation of an age-old question. In 1599, Shakespeare routinely broke the 4th wall and declared "All the world's a stage." Two thousand years ago, Plato's Allegory of the Cave asked how we know that our experience is more than a pale shadow of reality, when the pale shadows of our experience are all that we have ever known.

Fiction can be nothing more than a lighted screen or ink on paper. But if all of reality is experienced through our minds, then fiction can also alter our experience of reality by changing our minds. A good story used well can help us understand the world, learn how to interact with the world, and improve it. Fictional characters can help us become better real people. Through stories, I model my relationships and the person who I want to be. I choose what thoughts, speech, and action I identify with and against. I live a half-dozen lives in one story, and use my experience to shape a better reality.

I'm less personally experienced with the second use of fiction, but can also sympathize with people who use stories to escape. At some point, modeling myself in fictional characters becomes projection, and reenacting my experiences through them gives an emotional distance that helps me confront personal challenges. For others in difficult situations, fiction fills a gap reality has left in their lives. Fictional characters help us feel better, happy, successful, loved--

That said, the power of fiction means over-relying on stories can also be dangerous. As Dumbledore said, "It does not do to dwell in dreams and forget to live." While the power of fiction can be abused, the possibility of abuse does not negate its potential when used well, for growth or emotional fulfillment.

Haurchefant is an unusually good character for both purposes. Some characters are well-written, believable, interesting, and attractive, but not characters I would want to be friends with or even know in real life. Haurchefant started as a potentially problematic character--the Tales from the Dragonsong War short story, "Vows Unbroken," describes a troubled teenager, who slammed doors and had eyes "red and full of anger." But he grew beyond the circumstances of his birth and his unjust treatment, to better exemplified his society's ideals than trueborn sons despite being a bastard. 

Some characters are admirable like Haurchefant, but not believable or relatable. While backstory helps Haurchefant be a well-written character with depth, Haurchefant doesn't rely on back story. In-game, we're presented with a fascinating character. While the respected-leader and lecherous-pervert tropes are both common in fiction, especially Japanese and Eastern media, you rarely witness these characteristics combined. The line between charming flirtation and offensive harassment is thin, as demonstrated by the difficulty translators faced in keeping Haurchefant authentic and memorable but not creepy for players in different languages. The challenge is authentic to the story, given Haurchefant's status as the leader of a military outpost who must interact with people of different races, cultures, and social statuses. The widespread praise and mourning after his death demonstrate that Haurchefant navigated the challenge successfully, suggesting his quick-thinking and extraordinary emotional intelligence. Perhaps more than his morals and his growth, I admire how he led well without sacrificing his personality.

Finally, I would be amiss to analyze Haurchefant without speaking to his most defining trait: his affection for you, the player character. Haurchefant's morality and authenticism make him a good character to love, but these are reasons to love the character when love comes not from reason but from emotion. Goodness, believability, and skillfulness aside, Haurchefant is made to be a character we can't help but love. He helps you succeed in-game by fighting at your side. When you're betrayed, he trusts you despite the risk and others' doubts, supporting you without reserve. He praises your heroism in a world where other characters treat you like an errand-running servant. And he thinks you're hot. Like, really, really hot. The game's battle mechanisms, plot, and writing are all designed to show Haurchefant's affection for the player, and the surest way to make someone love you is to love them.

Haurchefant's appeal is rational and emotional. He's a good, believable, and impressive character. He makes our character--and through our character, us--feel worthy when our lives have gone to shit. By being someone admirable and making us care about him, he claims a place in our memories. Given the thin line between fiction and reality, his presence in our minds can change how we see and touch the world. Perhaps we recognize his potential in a stranger and lend them our support. Perhaps his admiration inspires us to take on the best qualities of our character in real life. Perhaps his flirtatiousness changes how we interact with others (for better or for worse). Great characters touch our world despite being fiction, and by being a leader and a pervert, Haurchefant has already demonstrated--he's a man who can do both.


End file.
